I made more than 60 paintings in 50 days! Reflections on 50|50 and the Frank Bette Paint Out
This month has been all about doing a mind-boggling amount of plein air painting.
I'm excited and relieved to announce that I have completed my 50 Views from Fulton!
I set out to do 50 paintings, each looking North from Fulton down the center of a street heading into the Richmond. My adventures were chronicled in the Richmond Review by reporter Clarisse Kim, who joined me in the field to interview me about the series. If that brings you to my newsletter, hello and welcome!
Each month I share what I’ve been up to lately artistically, then I have some event and reading recommendations, and lastly as a reward for making it all the way to the bottom, a photo of my cat, Ruby! This month has been all about doing a mind-boggling amount of plein air painting.
This series of 50 paintings was created for Sanchez Art Center’s 50|50 show, an annual exhibition for which dozens of artists create 50 works of art in 50 days, all at 6 inches by 6 inches. There will be an amazing variety of work! The opening event is on September 6 and 7, and those two days are the only chance to see the series complete in person, because after that collectors are able to take works home with them. You can reserve your ticket and time slot here. I'm very excited to hang them up and see them all together on the wall!
In just a few days, presales for the show will begin. If there is a particular one of the paintings you are interested in, you can reach out to me before the show opens to purchase it ahead of time. Two have already been reserved! Each of the paintings will be $250, which is more than $100 less than my standard price for this size of painting! The one exception is 17th Avenue, which will be $350 and will be framed.
The Fulton series was an epic undertaking. I crammed seven paintings into five days the week before Outside Lands in order to avoid fighting the crowds. On Monday, I made my 50th painting at Great Highway. It was cold and windy, but I was determined.
This is a classic view that I have somehow never painted before, and it felt so right as the last step of this journey.
All of the paintings are up on my website, but here are the final nine:
Though there are repetitive aspects to the series, I didn’t feel like I was making the same painting over and over. Each avenue felt like a whole new scene, and a whole new challenge. Each one is also about the weather and what was happening there on that day, you can see sunny days, foggy days, and everything in between. 23rd Avenue in particular changed a lot just a week or so after I painted it. It’s unique because there is a median with trees, and, though I had no idea, I caught it just before the trees were all trimmed.
23rd Avenue
I thought I would come up with a solution for things like the rows of cars that were present in almost every painting, but it seems to come down to the same principles over and over. Everything is made of shapes of light and dark, so I tried to really look at what I was seeing and distill it down to those shapes. I still don’t love painting cars, to be honest, but I have made my peace with it and I am less afraid of them than I was. My friend and fellow artist Karen Fiene made the lovely observation that the rows of cars going off into the distance look like a string of pearls adorning the street, which I love.
30th Avenue
Don’t forget to grab your tickets for the opening on September 6 or 7!
Another event complicated the execution of the Fulton series for me: the annual Frank Bette Paint out. The Frank Bette Center is a non-profit art gallery on Alameda that hosts exhibitions and art classes. Each year they host the paint out, which brings 40 juried artists to the island to paint for a week. Last year I participated for my first time, and I had such an amazing experience. Fortunately I was juried in again this year, and there was no way I was going to miss it, even though it overlapped with 50|50. I encouraged my friend Mila to apply as well, so this year we were able to do it as a team. We each made twelve paintings over the course of the five days! The event culminates in an outdoor exhibition, which is highly anticipated by Alameda residents and art collectors all over the Bay Area.
While scouting around to decide what to paint for the Quick Draw, an event on one of the days of the paint out where painters work with a short time frame and in a more defined area, I spotted an adorable vintage car. I just couldn’t get it out of my mind, so after the quick draw we returned to that spot and I painted the car. As I was working, the owner of the car came by and told me that it was his grandmother's car. Turns out he had already bought someone else's painting of the car from the quick draw that morning! He told me that it's a 1958 Nash Metropolitan, and that his grandmother drove 4 kids to Disneyland in it! Tight squeeze, for sure.
Nash
When he picked up his other painting, he also purchased this one! He says one will be for him and one for his brother. You really never know what stories are behind an object or place you choose to paint, unless you are lucky enough to encounter the people attached to them while you are at it. That's part of the beauty of being there and painting in person.
If you missed the outdoor exhibition, fear not! The gallery is displaying many of the works from this year until September 28. One of my favorite pieces from the week will be there:
Alameda Palms
This palm tree lined street is an iconic Alameda spot. If you look closely, you can see Mila is in this painting, just to the left of the truck.
One more favorite of mine from the paint out is my depiction of Alameda’s In-n-Out. I thought it would be hilarious to depict this pop icon with the same seriousness as the rest of my works from the week, and I think it’s delightful.
Between the twelve Frank Bette paintings, the 50 Fulton paintings, 2 other paintings with friends, plus one commission, I’ve done 65 paintings since this adventure started on June 24th! I’m still catching up on scanning, varnishing, and posting them all. And I’ve used up a lot of sunscreen.
In the coming weeks I’ll be resting a little, catching up on life maintenance, and starting on the next round of commissions. I do have another exciting, collaborative series coming up, so stay tuned here to find out more about that!
In the meantime, you still have a couple of weeks to catch Urban Tides, a celebration of San Francisco that is both at the Ferry Building in the form of large banners and at Voss Gallery! It’s exciting to have my art hanging up in one of my favorite buildings in the city. Check out last month’s newsletter for more details on that show!
Time for recommendations! Firstly, you must go see Star Trek Live at Oasis. It’s a drag parody of the original star trek series, and specifically “The Way to Eden.” Commonly referred to as the ‘hippie episode,’ it’s an hilarious and chaotic meltdown of Kirk’s well-ordered worldview. Whether or not you are a big fan of Star Trek, Star Trek Live is going to be a delight. Because of San Francisco’s deep history with hippie culture, this episode is a great choice. It runs Thursdays through Saturdays for the rest of the month, and you can get your tickets here!
If you’ve been reading the newsletter you may notice that I always recommend Crooner’s, and that’s because I think it’s a truly special event. It’s a lavender live sing cabaret, with talented vocalists bringing queer culture and creativity to a classy venue. It takes place in the Blue Room at Stookey’s Club Moderne, which was already one of my favorite bars before they opened their second space and started hosting events. It’s rare to have an event that combines true reverence for the art of music, stars all queer voice talent, and is produced and hosted by trans performers. This month’s theme is One For the Road: songs about drinking. Very appropriate since the cocktails at Stookey’s are fantastic. It’s a small, intimate venue, so tickets are limited. I recommend reserving ahead to guarantee your spot. There are two shows for the evening, one at 6:00pm and one at 8:30pm. I am the door guy, so I hope I’ll see you there!
photo by Kayleigh Shawn
I also like to offer a recommendation for a book or art. A few weeks ago, I discovered a book of photographs at the library called From Castro to Christopher. Shout out to the librarians at SF Public Library for featuring books catered to my taste! The photographs are from San Francisco and New York in the 70’s and 80’s, taken by Nicholas Blair. It’s candid, insider snapshots of gay and queer culture in those places at that time. Of course, I obsessively scanned the photos for buildings and landmarks that I could recognize in the SF photos, and I was amazed how little some things have changed.
I am already looking ahead and planning for the end of the year, so if you are interested in commissioning something for a loved one for this holiday season, it’s not too early to reach out! Additionally, this year I am opening up two discounted slots for home murals to be painted over the holiday period. If you are going out of town over Christmas and New Years, consider that an opportunity for me to transform an entire wall in your home! The two slots will be first come, first served, so let me know if you are interested! Here are two examples of private home murals I have done:
Thank you for joining me for another month! While you await the next newsletter, you can check out my website to see my portfolio of plein air paintings, still lifes, block prints, figure drawings, tiny scale model houses, murals, and you can also find information on commissions! Please feel welcome to email me and ask about any ideas you have that aren’t covered on my commission page, I’m always willing to discuss.
Stay tuned for next month, and let me know if there’s something you’d like to hear about in the newsletter in the future.
Lastly, as always, here's Ruby!
Thank you!
-Nathaniel J. Bice
he/him